The future has a frustrating habit of arriving slowly, then all at once. When I was in media, I remember the early days of mobile. Everyone could see where the world was heading - yet adoption felt painfully slow. The technology was imperfect; economics were questionable; ncumbents resisted; and skeptics dismissed the opportunity. In 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously declared that Apple’s iPhone had “no chance” of gaining significant market share. It is a worthwhile YouTube clip to watch and comical in hindsight. What happened? The infrastructure improved, new applications emerged and what once seemed impractical became indispensable. We are currently experiencing a similar moment with the tokenization of equities. Mobile transformed how we access information. Tokenization has the potential to transform how we own, transfer and use financial assets. Our equity markets already work extraordinarily well. But we should not confuse an efficient system with a finished one. The opportunity is not simply faster trading. It is reducing complexity, improving capital efficiency and enabling financial products that existing infrastructure makes unnecessarily difficult. And this transition is no longer theoretical. In January 2026, the @NYSE announced plans for a tokenized securities platform supporting continuous trading and immediate settlement. Its parent company is also exploring tokenized collateral across its clearing infrastructure. When the institutions that helped build the existing financial system begin investing in its next architecture, that is worth paying attention to. These are meaningful milestones, not proof of mass adoption; and skeptics are right to demand evidence. Thus, the initial resistance we are seeing is expected. Blockchain does not automatically create liquidity, reduce costs or guarantee ownership rights. Tokenization must deliver measurable benefits without compromising investor protections. But the mobile revolution offers an important lesson. The breakthrough was not putting the existing Internet on a smaller screen. It was enabling entirely new behavior. The same may prove true for equities. The greatest opportunity is not buying the same stock through a different interface. It is what that stock can now do. Imagine equities moving seamlessly between regulated platforms, serving as collateral and interacting with financial applications without navigating disconnected systems. None of this is guaranteed. Adoption must be earned through better economics, security and trust. But the financial infrastructure that makes assets easier to own, transfer and use will ultimately have a powerful advantage. And, if the industry gets this right, we will eventually stop talking about tokenized equities altogether. Just as mobile became inseparable from the Internet, tokenization will simply become part of how financial markets operate. That future day will not announce that it has arrived. Rather, adoption will occur slowly and we will eventually wonder how we ever operated any other way.

For anyone already living an extraordinary life, guess what: there's more!! Congratulations, @APompliano - you are a fountain of wisdom and I cannot wait to read your latest book!! Congrats!!

Crypto is most powerful when it feels simple. I was just playing around with Exodus Pay by @exodus and found a fun hack for parents who want to send Apple Cash to their kids: ➡️ Connect Exodus Pay to Apple Wallet ➡️ Swap crypto into XO Cash ➡️ Open a text and send Apple Cash Crypto to Apple Cash in a text. Useful far beyond parents and kids, but a fun example of real-world crypto utility. Enjoy! And, I am of course biased: @moonpay issued XO Cash and I am a huge fan of @jprichardson! 🤣💜

One of the most useful mental models I have learned came from @chr1sa at the beginning of my career … Most debates about new technologies are not actually about the technology. They are about the stage people believe it is in. Every transformative technology passes through four stages: ➡️ Science: Can it exist? ➡️ Technology: Can it work? ➡️ Business: Can it create value? ➡️ Culture: Can it become normal? But here is the mistake almost everyone makes: Most people judge every technology by the standards of the next stage, expecting revenue from technologies that are still engineering problems; expecting polished products from scientific breakthroughs; and expecting mass adoption from businesses that are still searching for product-market fit. The criticism is not necessarily wrong. It is often just early. This framework does not tell you which technologies will succeed. In fact, most will not. But every technology that changes the world must move through these stages. The Internet spent decades in research before it became commercial. AI spent decades in research before it became a platform. Today, nobody thinks about the technology underpinning sending a message or writing a post on X. Nobody thinks about satellites before opening Google or Apple Maps. The greatest technologies become invisible and that is why adoption curves only tell half the story: They tell you how many people have adopted a technology but they do not tell you what must happen before everyone else does. The biggest opportunities appear when a technology has already crossed into the next stage but the world still values it as if it has not. Thus, the hardest part is not predicting the future, it is recognizing what stage you are looking at before everyone else does.